Paris City Hall and Eiffel Tower Operating Company decided to provide visitors with a better experience. While the work for setting up the 9.84 ft tall bulletproof glass windows is still carried on, they launch from January an international contest to completely reorganize and rethink the site.
With over 6 billion visitors per year and about 20 billion who come to discover the site, today, the place is not perfect to welcome visitors in the best possible conditions.
This project aims at making more pleasant the access to the Parisian monument. Offering more services (toilet blocks, benches, baggage lockers, catering areas…) as well as culture, improving the pedestrian course from the urban transports, improving orientation and information in real time and rethink the working areas to improve the work conditions of the employees, here are the challenges that need to be taken up.
The visitor experience as well as the urban and landscape treatment are given pride of place in this project, developed in the spirit of the “Plan Piéton” [Pedestrian plan] and the “Stratégie Tourisme 2022” [Tourism strategy 2022] and lead by the oncoming “Plan Climat Air Energie” [Climate Air Energy Plan] in Paris.
According to Paris Mayor deputy Jean-François Martins entrusted with Sport, Tourism and Olympics and Paralympics: “The Eiffel Tower is the emblem of our city and our country across the glove. Every year, billions of tourists come to Paris to discover this monument iconic of our heritage. We must promote it and make it the standard of our welcoming-know-how.” “With Anne Hidalgo, for the Eiffel Tower, we want a beautiful and ecofriendly project, in respect of the registered site, sober and ambitious at the same time, agile and evolutive, at the scale of the Tower’s billions of tourists, a project that creates comfortable, attractive, playful paths for all users and giving a meaning to this visit again; the whole with a sober budget and a realization by late 2023 in the perspective of the Olympics 2024”.
Deputy in charge of urbanism, architecture, Grand Paris project, economic development and attractivity Jean-Louis Missika reminds “the expected project shall give the site wide perspectives again and all its glory. It shall offer to everyone the discovery of a monument through a clear landscape allowing the Iron Lady to find again its anchor and its bound to the ground. It’s not about reinventing the Eiffel Tower but embellishing it by reconnecting it with its environment whether it’s the Seine, the Trocadéro or the Champs de Mars and by offering welcoming public spaces keeping up with its size: 984 ft tall!”
Being wide, inventive, innovative and thinking about giving the best experience to visitors are the watchwords.
Practical information:
Provisional timetable
